This blog is a campaign against Turkish accession to the European Union. Through original articles, and links to relevant sources of information, it aims to demonstrate why Turkish EU membership would be a disaster for Europe and for Western civilisation.

Saturday, 26 February 2011

The Turkish government has just announced that it will refuse to take back illegal immigrants who have made their way into Europe from Turkey unless the EU eases visa restrictions on Turks.

This outrageous refusal ought to result in the immediate termination of Turkey's application to join the EU. But given how spineless most EU leaders are, that will almost certainly not happen.

It is clear that the Turks are deliberately using illegal immigration as a weapon against Europe in many ways. As made clear above, they have found it a useful bargaining tool in their negotiations to join the European Union.

But it is also extremely profitable for them. Istanbul is now the centre of the people-trafficking trade into Europe. It has become a multi-billion euro industry for the Turks.

The flow of illegal immigrants is also useful in accomplishing Turkey's longer-term strategic goals of islamifying Europe. Most of the illegal immigrants who come through Turkey are Muslims.

An additional benefit is that Greece's police and military forces are overwhelmed by the influx and forced to focus on dealing with it rather than attending to their normal security duties. 90% of the illegal immigrants who enter the European Union come through Greece and the total population of illegal immigrants in Greece is now equivalent to more than 10% of the Greek population. Naturally, this imposes an extraordinary pressure on the Greek budget and forces cuts in other areas, such as military expenditures.

Although it usually makes a show of combating illegal immigration, the Turkish goverment has in fact deliberately facilitated it. Under Erdogan's leadership, Turkey has abolished visa restrictions with most of the Muslim countries in the Middle East and North Africa. This makes it much easier for the would-be illegal immigrants from those countries to get within a stone's throw of Europe. A police chief in the Greek city of Orestiada commented to Der Spiegel:

Salamangas also says he's noticed a major change since Turkey waived its visa requirements for inhabitants of North African countries. In addition to Afghans, Iraqis and Palestinians, a significant share of the refugees now come from Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. "We didn't use to get them," he says.

Moreover, Turkish authorities have been caught several times actively helping illegal immigrants reach Europe. Here, for example, is a news item reporting an instance where the Turkish coast guard was captured on camera escorting a people-smuggling boat into Greek waters.

At the moment, the EU actually pays Turkey for every illegal immigrant it takes back. Instead, it should do the opposite. It should calculate the total cost of dealing with an illegal immigrant once they have entered EU territory. The immigrant should then be returned to Turkey along with an invoice for the full amount. If Turkey refuses to take the illegal immigrant back, the ongoing costs of dealing with the illegal immigrant in Europe should be added continuously to the bill. If the Turkish government refuses to pay, duties should be imposed on Turkish imports until the full amount has been paid off. Of course, with the weak-kneed leaders who currently rule Europe, we know that will never happen.

Friday, 25 February 2011

In December 2010, Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan received the Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights from the Libyan government. When accepting the award he said "Islamophobia is a crime against humanity, adding that no one can attack things that are sacred to Muslims using freedom of expression as an excuse."

The political opposition in Turkey has been demanding that Erdogan return this award but so far he has refused to do so. Remarkably, although he was swift to call on Egyptian President Mubarak heed the demands of his people, Erdogan has failed to make any public statement of support for the Libyan protesters.

Thursday, 24 February 2011

In response to the American ambassador's recent mild criticism of the arrest of several bloggers, a Turkish government minister has bizarrely claimed that his country has more freedom of the press than the USA does:

Interior Minister Besir Atalay said Thursday that Turkey enjoyed greater press freedom than the United States. “Turkey has a distinguished Press Law, and there is much more freedom of press in Turkey than other democratic countries in the world” the Anadolu state news agency quoted him as saying in Ankara. “With regard to press freedom, it’s much better in Turkey than in the United States.”

The facts belie this absurd claim, however.

In its annual “world press freedom index,” the Paris-based organization Reporters Without Borders ranked Turkey 138th out of 178 countries last year. The U.S. was in 20th place.

The index, which is based on 43 criteria assessing the state of press freedom in each country, has been compiled every year since 2002. Turkey’s ranking over that period has dropped from a high of 98 in 2005 to 103 in 2008, 123 in 2009 and 138 in 2010.

Friday, 18 February 2011

Having successfully clamped down on the print media by intimidating and arresting journalists and threatening independent media companies, Erdogan is now seeking to squelch independent voices online. This week his thugs arrested several journalists involved with the website OdaTV and charged them with "membership in an illegal network, disclosing state documents and inciting public animosity".

The Turkish Journalists Association condemned the legal action and said that there were thousands of journalists facing prosecution and 58 already imprisoned for their writings and opinions.

When the newly-appointed US ambassador expressed some concern about the detentions, he was sharply criticised by the Turkish foreign minister and even mocked by Erdogan himself.

“Unfortunately, some outsiders snooping into things that are not their business believe in this fuss and make comments,” he said in a speech broadcast to governing party members. “First stop and research, ask what it is all about, what the judiciary will be doing, ruling for what, learn all of this. This is called amateur diplomacy.”

Thursday, 17 February 2011

The French news channel France24 has obtained a secret UN document that sheds horrifying light on the organ-harvesting scandal in Kosovo and Albania. Although the document is heavily redacted, a number of key points emerge from it:

People were captured specifically so that their vital organs could be removed in surgical operations, after which they would, of course, die.

The people doing the capturing, the people who removed the organs and the eventual end users of the organs were Muslims, and not just Albanian Muslims. An eye witness describes "an Arab doctor" being involved in the organ extractions. The organs were eventually taken to Turkey and the Middle East.

The victims were Christians.

The victims were not just Serbs, but included other East Europeans, even women.

One of the ring-leaders of the Kosovo militia/crime fraternity, Daut Haradinaj (brother of the future Prime Minister of Kosovo, Ramush Haradinaj), responsible for the organ-harvesting operation was said to have "extremely good relationships with the Middle East and Turkey".

Once extracted, the organs were flown to Istanbul in Turkey.

Of course, mainstream media outlets never describe it in these terms, but what we have here is basically an international Muslim crime syndicate taking Christians captive, harvesting their organs and slaughtering them. The Christians were even kept alive for a while and given good food to be fattened up like farm animals until an order came in for their specific organ types.

Friday, 11 February 2011

The Ergenekon trials in Turkey, in which an array of military officers have been charged with plotting a coup against the AKP government, have been running for quite a while now in Turkey. I have to admit that I haven't been sure what to make of them. There is a sharp division of opinion in Turkey about whether the plot was genuine or merely a fraud concocted by the AKP to discredit and emasculate the military. Of course, either way, Ergenekon proves conclusively that Turkey is not fit to be a member of the European Union: either it has a military that stages coups to overthrow elected governments, or it has a government that stages show trials based on fabricated evidence against its own citizens.

This compelling article in the National Interest has finally clinched my judgement on the matter: it's a fraud. The author describe how he proved that the alleged coup documents, which form the basis of the case, refer to organisations using anachronistic names, names they did not have at the time the documents were written.

As disturbing as the revelations themselves is the reaction of the Turkish establishment to them. Even supposedly liberal newspapers are wary of reporting the facts the author uncovered. He has faced anti-semitic smears and many people have privately confessed fears for their own safety amid the atmosphere of intimidation the AKP has created in the country.

We heard story after story about self-censorship and refusal to engage with subjects that might offend the Gülen movement or the government. Journalists complained about intimidation, and anchormen told us during commercial breaks about the risk they were taking by interviewing us. A very well respected journalist, known for his middle-of-the-road views, told us that for the first time in his professional career he was worried about his future.

The Zaman newspaper, controlled by the Fethullah Gülen movement, led the attempts to discredit the author. Gulenists are often touted as the perfect embodiment of "moderate Muslims", yet their eagerness to promote the authenticity of the Ergenekon case and to discredit its doubters betrays their true and sinister motivation: to remove obstables to the advance of Islam within Turkey.

Two Turkish Christians who were trying to encourage others to convert to Christianity were charged with insulting Turkishness and inciting hatred against Muslims. The case has taken years to wend its way through the courts but culminated last week in them being convicted of "lesser offences", although the news reports I have seen about it do not specify what these lesser offences are.

Take a moment to think about how primitive a country that has a crime of "insulting Turkishness" on its statute books must be.

Sunday, 6 February 2011

British Defence Secretary Liam Fox visited Turkey last week and engaged in more of the self-abasing dhimmitude we have come to expect of his government. In an article for the Turkish Press, he re-affirmed Prime Minister David Cameron's embarassingly unnuanced support for Turkey's aspirations.

Turkey stands at the new military, economic, energy and political crossroads of the world and it would be profoundly wrong for Europeans to turn their backs at this time. The UK will continue to be Turkey’s strongest advocates for EU membership. I will take every opportunity possible to remind my European colleagues who are sceptical about Turkey’s future inside Europe just how short-sighted they are. What a mistake of truly historic proportions it would be if, the leaders across Europe delivered future generations into a much more dangerous and destabilised continent because Turkey was excluded from something it rightly deserves—membership of the EU.

Unlike Cameron, however, he at least did try to get something in return, and that something was Turkey's support for forthright measures designed to restrain Iran's nuclear ambitions. The fact that it is even questionable that this support will be forthcoming, however, illustrates perfectly how unlike us Turkey really is, and how damaging its membership of the EU could be.